Series: Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development (Mono)

Executive function (EF) is a central aspect of cognition that
undergoes significant changes in early childhood. Changes in EF in
early childhood are robustly predictive of academic achievement and
general quality of life measures later in adulthood. We present a
dynamic neural field (DNF) model that provides a process-based
account of behavior and developmental change in a key task used to
probe the early development of executive function--the Dimensional
Change Card Sort (DCCS) task. In the DCCS, children must flexibly
switch from sorting cards either by shape or color to sorting by
the other dimension. Typically, 3-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds,
lack the flexibility to do so and perseverate on the first set of
rules when instructed to switch. Using the DNF model, we
demonstrate how rule-use and behavioral flexibility come about
through a form of dimensional attention. Further, developmental
change is captured by increasing the robustness and precision of
dimensional attention. Note that although this enables the model to
effectively switch tasks, the dimensional attention system does not
"know" the details of task-specific performance. Rather, correct
performance emerges as a property of system-wide interactions. We
show how this captures children's behavior in quantitative detail
across 14 versions of the DCCS task. Moreover, we successfully test
a set of novel predictions with 3-year-old children from a version
of the task not explained by other theories.